the bottlenecked blog

40 Thoughts for 40 Years

2025-04-08T23:08:00.001-04:00

Today is my 40th birthday and I thought I’d take the chance to share a collection of small thoughts I’ve had this year. As you can see in the history of this blog, I used to post much more of my thoughts online. However, as I got older, I realized people rarely change their minds. So I spent less time putting my thoughts on the internet.

But if you know me, then you know I still have a lot of thoughts and love to put them out there. So over the years, I’ve gotten in the habit of texting myself what I might otherwise posted online. It’s become a kind of miniature private blog to myself. So, for my 40th birthday, I got myself a present. The chance to share about 40 of the things I’ve texted myself over the last year (organized by date texted, not topic):

True greatness requires longevity.

Investment in institutions (government, school, business, communities) is the key to human thriving. Institutions attempt to systematize beyond the influence of individual human choices. In that way, they are also inherently dehumanizing.

The bias of the news is that there is always something newsworthy. You’ll never see the headline “Things are mostly the same as they were yesterday”. Daily news needs to talk less about the present. More about the past. And a lot less about what the future might hold.

Just because a habit was once adaptive, doesn’t mean it’s working for you now.

Religion can offer us an ancient sense of humility: Our free will is constrained by our weaknesses. I’m grateful it’s also constrained by a loving God.

Parent as if you knew your kids were going to be okay. You’ll push them less and enjoy them more. Then they’ll probably turn out okay.

Capitalism is said to have an invisible hand that guides markets. Democracy needs to have a visible hand that voters can see, appreciate, and want to support.

Move away from “is what I’m saying the most correct” to “is what I’m saying the most effective”.

It seems like Adam and Eve were never meant to die. Never meant to go to heaven. Maybe this is the purpose of the human story. To end up better than where we started.

The American empire will eventually fade. Instead of putting energy towards holding on to as much power for as long as possible. Maybe it’s more productive to put that energy towards supporting growing nations that might share our values (maybe like India, Brazil, Ethiopia, etc).

One of the best ways to make America more resistant to radicalism and more open to gradual change is to help us realize just how successful they we've already been.

Every piece of criticism needs to be couched in the context of predetermined acceptance.

If someone is primarily describes the “good news” of Christianity as just delayed gratification (wait for heaven), that is truly some very bad news.

Your emotions are true, but they might not be telling you the truth.

Avoid financial advice that sounds like easy money or a complicated workaround.

Unlikely benefits of having a lot of children younger: Every year early you have a child, is an extra year you are in their life. Every extra child you have is an extra family member for them after you are gone.

The tradeoff to the many benefits of the 18th-century Enlightenment was an over-reliance of what we can see and understand. Apparently there is a lot about the world we will never understand. Thinking otherwise turns us into skeptics and conspiracy theorists.

We should replace the phrase “I can’t do that” with “I don’t want to do that” (because the benefits of success aren’t worth the costs to try)

“Don’t worry what other people think. No one is keeping your score. They are only keeping their own score” -Jeff Probst

Maybe everyone everywhere is struggling and needs to be treated with kid gloves. If so, I’ve got a lot of more apologies to give.

When you compare men and women, remove the top 1% (which is mostly old white men). Then by almost all measures, women are doing just as well if not better than most men over the last 30 years. This is both a celebration of the progress made and a model for how we can help moving forward. This is a big idea I’ve gotten from listening to Scott Galloway

Immigrants are an incredible piece of positive social engineering. There’s something about the immigrant experience that even makes them perform better than other marginalized groups. Are Kamala Harris and Barack Obama successful people of color, or are they products of a family with an immigrant work ethic and talent?

I’m less afraid of AI taking over society like Terminator. I’m more afraid of AI negatively affecting the way humans actually live their lives in the real world. This is already happening with social media algorithms.

The average age of inaugurated Presidents when I was a kid (Clinton, Bush, Obama) was 49. The average of the next 3 presidents (Trump, Biden, Trump) is 75.

Cynicism is a type of cowardice.

“Identical twins, raised apart are more similar than fraternal twins raised together. The most important thing you give your children is genetics. The second is zip code” -Daniel Pink
I feel like this justifies my laissez-faire parenting and the fact that I’m so picky about houses. Note: I’ve been technically homeless for over 6 months.

When things are bad, just keep pushing. When things are good, slow down.

Too much advice, even too much good advice, can create anxiety in the receiver and actually end up being taken incorrectly and become bad advice. If you feel that now, just stop reading this blog post ;)

People only get better when it’s easier to improve than to stay the way they are.

One of my greatest personal flaws is I love the simplicity of Checkers and I am easily tired from the complexity of Chess.

A good summary of the U.S. economy of my adult life: The price of non-essentials have gone down (TV’s, computers, air travel, etc) largely thanks to automation, but the price of essentials has gone up (housing, groceries, college, etc), largely due to fixed human labor costs. Curious how AI will affect this,.

There is never a more fickle mistress than the approval of others.

The bad times will come and go. So will the good times. It’s all about enduring and enjoying the now. If life is a gift, we’ve got to accept it all with gratefulness. Somehow.

Expectations are what drive us. They are also what drive us crazy.

My pitch for a new cult: “25 year Amish”. There are costs to living in the modern world. So instead of tying your culture to an arbitrary century like the Amish do, just delay all technology you use by 25 years. So go out and get a Blackberry and start ordering books from Amazon.

If you find yourself serving someone, something, or some group more than they serve you… great! That’s the purpose of life. To become a net positive on the world.

Negative emotions are key factor in human survival. Ignore them at your own peril.
That said, see above about the news high jacking your emotions.

People are not drawn to you. People are drawn to how they feel about themselves around you.

Earnestness is not a measure of whether what you are hearing is in fact correct. Earnestness is saying confidently what you think is correct. This is what makes Trump so believable, yet so incorrect.

It’s weird that as you get older your parents have less impact on your daily life. But it’s not until you’re older that you realize just how much they impact who you are.

I have found that my own lack of empathy is a lack of willingness to endure the feeling someone else in having right in front of me. It is brave to embrace the joy and sorrow of the world around you.

This NYT article is about how one of the most powerful things you can give children to increase their resiliency is an intergenerational self. An idea of how they fit into the larger narrative of their family history. A way to test this, is to see how much of the stories about their parents and grandparents they know. My wife and I played a trivia game asking our children these questions. They scored an average of 84%!

Career advice for my children: cast a wide net of hobbies and interests and then follow the ones that offer the lifestyle (money, hours, satisfaction) you desire.

You don’t get to choose who you are. That is largely a function of who you spend your time with. But you do get to choose who you spend your time with. I’d suggest regularly participating in more than just one group to ensure a healthy competition of ideas.

I’d like to increase not only my transparency, but also my vulnerability. One challenge for myself is to use more “I feel” statements. People will commonly respond incorrectly to vulnerability, but worst case scenario I’m just giving us all practice.

I’ve gotten very good at communicating with large groups. My challenge for the next decade of my life: give more individual attention.

Time for Additional Constitutional Amendments

2022-07-05T21:41:00.010-04:00

Faith in our institutions are at an all time low. This is a bipartisan problem that is felt most acutely in the federal government. Whether it’s the Presidency, Congress, or the Supreme Court, over the last 75 years Americans have slowly felt as if they can't trust their government. However, this is not a unique problem in American history. Think of the chaos of the 1960’s and the upheaval of the industrial “Gilded Age” followed by the Great Depression. The Civil War and Reconstruction easily mark the most divided time in American history (after all we were literally divided into two governments). Even the original ratification of the Articles of Confederation and Constitution itself was incredibly contentious (and sometimes violent).

The solution then, is the same as the solution we need now. The United States already has a system to improve the federal government. I suggest we make small modifications to our federal Constitution to better handle the problems of this millennium. This has been the pattern of response to national crises roughly every 50 years. Here’s a quick breakdown of the previous 27 Constitutional Amendments:

1791-1804: Bill of Rights and 11th and 12 amendments laid out essential rights and corrected blind spots in our judicial and legislative system.
1865-1870: Three Post-Civil War amendments finally ended slavery, made all born in America citizens, and gave all male citizens the right to vote*
1913-1920 and 1933: Four Progressive amendments that created a more equitable tax system, direct election of Senators, women’s suffrage, and then two more after the Depression adjusted inauguration dates and repealed the 18th Amendment.
1951-1971: Five Civil Rights amendments adjusting presidential terms, DC representation, poll taxes, presidential succession, and voting age.
1992: This largely ceremonial amendment to limit congressional pay was one of two originally proposed in the Bill of Rights, but were not ratified then (go here for the delightful story of how it passed).

*It’s important to recognize that these 27 amendments did not solve all of America’s problems or even completely solve the problem they were trying to fix. However, they were instrumental in eventual success. For example, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s/60’s was successful because the federal government finally agreed to uphold the intent of the post-Civil War amendments. And ignoring the one off impactless amendment from 1992, we haven't had a meaningful Constitutional amendment in 51 years.

It’s also important to note that these successful amendments were structural changes to how our government works and who it works for, NOT largely hot button issues of the day (like abortion, guns, or in the case of the 18th Amendment, the prohibition of alcohol). Instead, amending the Constitution is best suited for fixing outdated structures so the now improved government can deal with those hot button issues.

So in what ways is the structure of the U.S. Constitution failing to handle the problems of the 21st century? I believe America’s primary issue is that the political fringes of each party have become the dominant voice. Both in elections and the media and especially on the internet). This has pushed a moderate majority into the corners of their own political institutions. Here are a few examples of how most Americans actually stand on a few of our most tense political issues:

“85 percent of American voters think abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances“ and a majority of Americans fall in the middle
“a large majority, 83%, supports supplying the Ukrainian army with military equipment”
“More than two in three Americans (68%) support legalizing marijuana”
“U.S. support for legal same-sex marriage continues to trend upward, now at 70%”
“91% welcome immigration, including 68% who favor a “low level”’

To put those numbers in context, only “60% of U.S. adults drink alcoholic beverages”. If you’ve ever tried to pick a restaurant with a large group of people then you know it’s hard to get a majority of people to agree on anything. So that means our political institutions and the conversations surrounding them are being overrun by the loudest and the most extreme. And I don’t even mean extreme in a negative way. Just in a way that doesn’t represent the majority of Americans' perspectives. This does not work in an “infinite game” where our primary goal is to ensure the political game keeps going as we make this a “more perfect union”.

So here I submit 5 proposed amendments to the United States Constitution (each with a few Sections). 1st is on improving federal elections, mostly for Congress. 2nd on trying to balance the power of large corporations in private and public life. 3rd proposed amendment to improve the federal court system. 4th to improve the executive branch. And finally the fifth is a wildcard idea that would probably have the biggest impact on balancing how government power. I even organized them by priority in which I think would be most easily passed and have the most positive long term impact. However, all 5 do not need to pass for there to be significant improvement.

1st Amendment Proposal: Gerrymandering, Ranked Choice Voting, and Campaigns in Federal Elections

Section 1: Districts represented by members of Congress, or by members of any state legislative body, shall be compact and composed of contiguous territory. The state shall have the burden of justifying any departures from this requirement by reference to neutral criteria such as natural, political, or historic boundaries or demographic changes. The interest in enhancing or preserving the political power of the party in control of the state government is not such a neutral criterion.’
Section 2: All federal elections will move from a “first past the post” to an “instant runoff” structure. If a candidate receives more than half of the votes in an election, that candidate wins. However, if no majority winner is found, the race is decided by an "instant runoff." The candidate with the fewest votes is removed, and voters who picked that candidate will have their votes count for their next choice. This process continues until there’s a majority winner.
Section 3: All Federal campaigns or electioneering are limited to take place 3 months before Election Day, which will now be a Federal holiday. This includes organizations or individuals.

This first proposal is the most important. Section 1 is the most needed Constitutional amendment. Gerrymandering allows elected officials to draw the lines for who elects them. This has been done since the beginning of our country, but modern technology allows it to be dangerously precise. More and more districts are drawn to ensure victory of the incumbent party. This means general elections between both parties have an assumed winner and the party primary is the real contest. So politicians move to the middle of their party (organizations not only absent in the Constitution, but actually warned against by our framers), instead of the middle of their constituents. The right moves farther right and the left moves farther to the left. In fact, I actually took the exact language proposed by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in his book on the topic of amendments.

Section 2 implements ranked choice voting and removes the concerns that you're stuck between 2 candidates you don’t like. It also removes the cost and complication of runoff elections. This is already used in a few states and I think it would be adopted more locally once it’s Constitutional nationally. I don’t expect this will totally shake up the two party system (an overstated concern in my opinion). Instead, what it will do is, in combination with Section 1, give politicians more specific information from their constituents and hold them accountable to them.

Section 3 is more straightforward. The goal is to limit what has now become a continuous election cycle; where the next campaign season begins immediately after election day. This not only exhausts voters and decreases the quality of discourse, it favors candidates with deep pockets and big donors. It also finally makes Election Day a federal holiday.

It’s also important to note that these structural changes could be, but never will be implemented by Congress itself. This Amendment restricts the power of entrenched interests and opens them to more political and ideological competition. Therefore these must be done by Constitutional Amendment.

2nd Amendment Proposal: Antitrust and Campaign Finance

Section 1: No provision of the Constitution shall be construed to prohibit the Executive and Legislative Branch from fulfilling their obligation to limit or break-up any national business monopolies or trusts (group of businesses).
Section 2: Neither the First Amendment nor any other provision of this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit the Congress or any state from imposing reasonable limits on the amount of money that candidates for public office, or their supporters, may spend in election campaigns.

Section 1 tries to codify into the Constitution a century old series of laws that created the Federal Trade Commission and our antitrust system. However, those laws sometimes rub up against interpretations of other parts of the Constitution. Those old laws also require the branches of government to choose to be active and I’m hoping the phrasing of “obligation” will require action. I’m also hoping these changes will then make it easier for Congress to help deal with America’s growing inequality problem.

Section 2 is another one I borrowed from Justice Stevens. It essentially prevents courts from overturning reasonable campaign finance controls. These two sections together would make it easier to restrict the growing power of big business over politics.

3rd Amendment Proposal: Clarifying and Updating the Federal and Supreme Courts

Section 1: No Person shall be a federal judge who shall not have attained to the age of forty years, and been ten years a Citizen of the United States.
Section 2: A term maximum of 15 will be set for each justice appointed after the ratification of this amendment.
Section 3: The number of Supreme Court justices shall be set at 15. A new justice seat will be added every 4 years until that number is reached.
Section 4: New seats must be filled by the president in office when the seat is vacated.

The Constitution is surprisingly silent on the federal courts. Unlike the other branches there is not an age or even citizenship requirement. Article 3 which lays out the Court’s powers has less than 400 words. It wasn’t until Marbury v. Madison (1803) when it was even exactly clear what the role of court would be. As the other 2 branches have increased in dysfunction, more and more pressing issues have had to be solved in the courts. That has resulted in the same kind of political dysfunction there.

Section 1 is borrowing language from the other age and citizenship requirements in the other branches. To my knowledge this would only have excluded a dozen or so judges in American history (and just by a few years).

Section 2 gives a specific limit on the number of years a justice can serve. Right now it is life, but the average is about 16. Recently there has been a race to nominate younger and younger justices so they can stay longer. This would have required Roberts and Alito to retire soon. It would have required Clarence Thomas to retire 15 years ago. However, I do think it’s important this only be applied to future justices so as to decrease its controversy (this was also done with the 22nd Amendment limiting the president to 2 terms).

Section 3 almost doubles the current number of justices, but over a 24 year period. The number of justices fluctuated between 5-10 until it was stabilized at 9 after the Civil War. However, I believe 15 justices decreases the pressure of each new nomination without making group deliberation too onerous. It would also allow them to break into sub-committees if that process was found helpful to take on more cases.

Section 4 prevents any more partisan delays like we saw in 2016.

4th Amendment Proposal: Altering the Only Elected Position in the Executive Branch

Section 1: The position of the presidency will be divided into 3 separately elected positions to replace the position of Vice President. All three positions will retain the same requirements and accountability currently held for the position of President.
The President will retain the domestic responsibilities and appointments laid out in the Constitution other than those prescribed to the other two elected positions.
The Secretary of State will oversee foreign affairs and Ambassadors of the United States. All military appointments will be done by the Secretary of State with the approval of the President and then confirmed by the Senate.

The Attorney General will oversee the Department of Justice as the chief law enforcement officer as well as advise the heads of federal executive departments on legal matters. All appointments to leadership and division head positions will be done by the Attorney General with the approval of the President and then confirmed by the Senate.
All 3 elected members of the Executive Branch must agree to use any weapons of mass destruction and only in response to those weapons used against the United States.

Section 2: The elected positions of the Executive Branch will continue to be chosen by the Electoral College, though all states must transition to a proportional model in which the number of electors each state awards is equal to the percentage of the popular vote the candidate received.

Section 1 solves a problem that the modern presidency has created. If there is one part of our federal government the founding fathers wouldn't recognize it’s the power of the Executive. The President now appoints or oversees 4 million government employees. This is how most states (including my home state) elect their Executive Branches. It also removes one of the biggest structural flaws in the Constitution, the useless Vice President. As the power of the presidency has grown, it has become more and more alarming that the person set to take over if the president is unable, is an otherwise powerless position. And it assures the Justice Department remains independent. The last part of Section 1 alters what is now a unilateral nuclear decision maker.

Section 2 keeps the intention of the Electoral College without the exaggerated effects we see now thanks to a larger divide between urban and rural America. This would prevent Presidential elections from being decided in essential 5 swing states. It also prevents voters in states like Wyoming and Vermont from having their vote count almost 4 times more than Florida or North Carolina. It’s important to note that the current “winner take all” strategy was not always the case.

5th Amendment Proposal: Making it Easier to Increase the Number of States

Section 1: U.S. territories and regions within states may apply for statehood without Congressional or Presidential Approval once they have reached a population of 1 million residents.
Section 2: Contiguous regions within states may apply for separate statehood without Congressional or Presidential Approval once they have reached a population of 1 million residents.
Section 3: The number of states shall be capped at 250.

Section 1 allows for something that should have been done a century ago. If there is one thing that most Americans throughout history would recognize is the addition of new states. In 200 years we grew from 13 original colonies to a continent full of 50 states (about one state every five years). However, due to race (most non-state territories are suspiciously brown) and a love of round numbers we have not increased the number of states even as we kept them as U.S. territories. The Amendment would also prevent the U.S. from oppressively adding new territory because the local population could quickly become a voting state. Simply, the Constitution should follow the flag.

Section 2 essentially removes Article 4, Section 3 of the Constitution which requires Congressional approval before a state can split. If we truly trust American Federalism then having large states (either by land side or population) just doesn’t fit with the original blueprint for our American republic. Imagine how much less controversial the recent Supreme Court decisions would be if moving to a new state was as easy as moving to a new county.

Section 3 prevents states from gaming the system and creating an unmanageable number of states. 250 may seem like a lot, but Virginia, by far the largest state in 1790, had a smaller population than even the smallest state Wyoming today

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The goal of all 5 of these amendments is to increase “state capacity”. To increase the quality of our government while also binding the country closer together. I have heard concerns that our Constitution is just too old and too flawed to be fixed. But do you think the political leadership that you are so unsatisfied with could remake something better from scratch? If we can’t pass and execute good laws, how could we trust anyone to create a whole new system?

The founding fathers assumed we would make structural changes to the Constitution as we saw structural changes to our country. They themselves passed 12 amendments. James Madison, the primary writer of the Constitution, helped oversee the passage of all 12 even before he became President. He understood the document would need to be updated. It has been done 27 times. We’ve since seen every other generation pass 3-5 amendments to deal with mounting crises. I believe we can and must do it again.

In many ways you wouldn’t even recognize the way our country first functioned under the original Constitution. No protections for citizenship or voting rights (for even landless white men). Non-functioning presidential election system. Not even an assumption that the Constitution even applied to the state governments. No direct election of senators and taxes to cast a ballot.

The final question is, how do we actually pass an amendment? Although there are two ways to amend the Constitution, all 27 amendments have followed the same path. 2/3 of Congress must approve the amendments and then 3/4ths of the states must approve them. It’s a difficult road, but it doesn’t have to be done in one sweeping reform. Americans are not uniquely broken, but an unaltered Constitution has been. It has improved before, it can be again.

White Privilege, White Supremacy, and White Evangelicals

2020-10-07T13:05:00.005-04:00

Last week my bike got stolen off the front porch. I wasn't sure if it was worth calling the police since bikes get stolen all the time. It did however have a bright red kids passenger trailer attached to the back, so I thought the chance of them finding it was higher. When the officers arrived they were professional and patient. My children, who witnessed the theft, didn't have many details to give them, but we chatted casually about the bike and any distinguishing features it might have.

Surprisingly enough (to me and the officer) he was actually able to find the bike and was waiting on me at my house when I returned from the grocery store just a few hours later. Given the frustrating beginning, this turned out to be a very positive experience for my family. We got our bike back with minimal pain. We learned an important lesson about using bike locks. My neighborhood (we have a text chain) was encouraging throughout. My children got to interact and see what community policing looks like.

This is what the Black Lives Matter movement wants for all Americans. Regular, normalized, police interactions. Civil rights has always been a push to give the disenfranchised what the privileged already have. In fact, our next door neighbor, who just so happens to be black, jokingly said “if I ever have anything stolen I’ll be sure and have you call the police for me!”

As is painfully aware, this has been difficult for white America to understand. If we only use our own experiences to understand the world, we will only understand our world. So I wanted to follow up that story with some content that has helped me gain a greater understanding of reality.

I’ll also note that these links I gathered to speak directly to one specific group of white Americans: white evangelicals. I am a Christian. I attend a theologically orthodox church. And I believe these people, my people, have the most potential to come into a right understanding on this issue.

This first link is a podcast that describes the modern political history of this group known as “evangelicals”. It starts all the way back in the founding days of the United States, but if you want to skip to when the movement truly began, you can start at minute 37:45.

What this podcast above shows is that race and segregation, not abortion, was the initial unifying political force for white evangelicals in the 1970’s. Even though racial integration was explicitly a key issue for the white evangelicals politically, I don’t think that’s as obvious today. It confirms what I wrote in this old post before the 2016 election about how the abortion issue, especially in presidential politics, is largely a red herring. And here’s more recent link about the abortion conversation among Christians from an old blogging friend.

There can be an assumption, based on white experience, that the issue of race is not important today. However, there are some stark differences living in this country and a black citizen. Unless you believe there is an inherent difference between races, then the only explanation for such a gap is hundreds of years of a 2 steps forward, 1 step back. Here is a video from an evangelical Christian laying out many examples of such inequalities.

Racial inequality is real. The compounded effects of centuries of legal and societal policies are real. The threat of white supremacy continues to be real. The lack of modern institutional improvements with those realities in mind is also very real. I’ll close with a very specific theological call to the white evangelical community. Here is a video from the most prominent member of my denomination, Tim Keller. It directly addresses why Christians, more than any other group, should be comfortable with the reality that the actions of previous generations can bring both blessing and curses that we need to mourn.

Donald Trump Can Not Be Trusted

2020-06-24T23:36:00.002-04:00

Over the last several years my online usage has moved away from complicated topic discussions and more to purely social use. The biggest reason why is time. With 4 kids and 2 jobs I just have less of it. The second biggest reason is my realization that people just don’t change their mind very much. If there is one thing people don’t change their mind about the most, it is President Donald J. Trump. Regular polls have shown that since he locked in the GOP nomination in 2015, he has had between 35% to 45% approval rating. The most consistent in modern American history. More on that later.

However, I decided to take a break from my break. Donald Trump has many many flaws, but I think his core weakness as President is that he cannot be trusted. This is not a unique or new idea, but it became extra clear to me this week as his fraught relationship with the truth was revealed in 5 separate stories that span the spectrum of his corrupting influence. The topics include 1) the current pandemic, 2) race, 3) Supreme Court, 4) obstruction of justice, and 5) Trump’s obsession and deception of his own popularity. Heads up, this is very long. I started it on Father’s Day weekend in the middle of a pandemic so I had had a little more free time than normal. Here we go.

1) As I wrote the first draft of this post, the President was holding a live rally in an indoor Tulsa arena where about 20,000 people were going to be crammed together. It’s expected another 50,000 will be gathering outside. This is in the middle of a global pandemic that has so far resulted in almost half a million deaths globally, about 122,000 of those in the United States (with over 30,000 new cases today, those numbers will obviously continue to increase).

This is just an example of one action taken by Donald Trump that encourages Americans to do the opposite of what his own CDC recommends. He was so extreme in his desire for a mass gathering, his own fans didn’t show up in the numbers they had planned. The event was half empty. Instead of discussing all the incorrect things he’s said on the coronavirus, I’d like to focus on the theme of his comments and the impact they’ve had on the national mindset.

The tone Donald Trump has taken since he was first briefed in January has been one of uninformed optimism. He’s predicted the end of this pandemic several times and the dates have all come and gone. He’s consistently under-predicted the number of deaths, even while his own federal agencies were saying otherwise. He continues to push and apparently even took an unrecommended and potentially dangerous antimalarial drug. Even now, he’s urging the opening of the NFL against the suggestion of Dr. Fauci, a member of Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force.

This is the President’s first major crisis and to be fair, it’s a big one. It’s hard to imagine a worse response. The reason why this kind of false optimism not based in reality is dangerous is because of the impact it has on the national consciousness. The Stockdale Paradox perfectly illustrates this. James Stockdale was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for 7 years. When asked how he lasted he said:

I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life.

When asked who wasn’t able to last in the terrible conditions he said

Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.

Many Americans have seemingly moved on in their attitude and behavior toward the virus because we’ve become victims of Presidential hype. We’re impatient because we were told over and over again that the car trip would take just a few weeks. Now we’re several months in and new cases in my own hometown are higher than they have ever been and many businesses that reopened are now re-closing. My own comedy theater has yet to resume in person activities. Trump’s most recent suggestion to the spike? Saturday at the Tulsa rally he said “Here’s the bad part. When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down, please.”

2) Another event Friday was Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the end of slavery after the Civil War. This month is also the 99th anniversary of one of the largest race conflicts in American history. The “Black Wall Street Massacre” occurred in the same city and in the same month as Trump’s planned Tulsa rally. It’s possible he was ignorant of both of these commemorations when he planned his rally (especially since he moved the event one day in response to the backlash), but that only reveals how uniformed he and his administration is.

This is not his first debacle on race. In fact his first political lie as a rising political figure was his leading role in the birther movement. Trump was the most prominent figure calling into question the birthplace of President Barack Obama. There is no doubt this conspiracy theory was only able to take hold because he was a man of color with an usual name. It was not until Trump had already won the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, 5 years after he first promoted the lie, that he recanted.

His first campaign speech was also full of racial innuendo when he claimed that Mexico was “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” It continued as he pushed against kneeling at football games, making it a national issue. After a self proclaimed white supremacist march resulted in one of them driving a vehicle into counter protester in Charlottesville, Trump claimed they “had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

Finally, just a few weeks ago Trump used the racially charged word “thugs” to describe the overwhelmingly peaceful Black Lives Matter protests and tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. He was trying to incorrectly paint the picture of the protests and encourage violence in response. Twitter actually took the unprecedented step to label the tweet as “violating their rules for glorifying violence”. The phrase comes from a Florida police chief in the tail end of the civil rights movement who used the phrase to threaten marchers. Infamous Segregationist George Wallace also used the phrase during his 1968 presidential campaign.

Twitter last week also labeled a video he shared as "manipulated media". The original year old clip was an encouraging scene of a white toddler and a black toddler running to give each other a hug. The clip shared by the President of the United States edited the footage to make it seem like the black child was running from the white child and overlaid it with a CNN logos to make it seem like it was a live broadcast (which it was not). This is by no means a thorough list of actions and words from Trump that could easily be described as racist. That would be (and probably already is) it’s own book. Again, I’m attempting to just focus on events of the last week, but there is just so much (more on that later).

3) Another series of events this week were several major decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. In both of them, conservative justices (even one nominated by Trump himself), voted against the arguments of the Trump administration. In the first case (and another last year), the SCOTUS claimed that the Trump administration was not arguing in good faith and essentially attempting to deceive the court.

The first case is directly related to the previous topic of race. DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals received a big win against the lawyers of President Trump this weekend. For now, the “Dreamers” will be able to legally stay, something overwhelmingly supported by Americans. Conservative John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion saying:

We address only whether the [Department of Homeland Security] complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action. Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients. That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner.

AKA, the Trump administration did not think through their actions or give a reasonable explanation for deporting millions of people who have essentially spent their entire lives as law abiding members of our nation; starting jobs, businesses, and families who would be legal citizens at their birth.

This is a very similar decision to the Court’s decision exactly a year ago when they ruled the Trump Administration likely could, but in this instance cannot add the citizenship question to the 2020 Census. Conservative John Roberts once again spoke for the majority saying that:

here the Voting Rights Act enforcement rationale—the sole stated reason—seems to have been contrived. The reasoned explanation requirement of administrative law is meant to ensure that agencies offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public. The explanation provided here was more of a distraction.

The Trump Administration was lying to the Supreme Court in the actual reasons they wanted the question added. Exposed by their own records, the main goal was suppression Latino residents who might otherwise shy away from the census.

And this weekend yet another big loss for Trump’s lawyers in the highest court came in the decision whether or not to allow members of the LGBTQ community to be protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like DACA, this decision is widely popular among Americans. Yet, in response to this decision the President makes this seem like a personal attack on himself and suggests packing the court. These examples show how over emphasized the often repeated reason for my fellow evangelicals to vote for Trump: to get more conservative justices. This will only help if Trump is able to convince these judges he is dealing in good faith.

Best example of that might be in Trump’s call just a few weeks ago that states must “allow these very important, essential places of faith to open right now for this weekend [...] if they don’t do it, I will override the governors. In America, we need more prayer not less.” Yet one week later the Supreme Court ruled with Chief Justice Roberts in the majority once again saying that truth should lead the way:

while local officials are actively shaping their response to changing facts on the ground. The notion that it is ‘indisputably clear’ that the Government’s limitations are unconstitutional seems quite improbable.

In fact, it is Trump's assertion he could somehow reopen them himself that would obviously be unconstitutional.

4) In yet another major story this weekend, our worst fears about the President are confirmed in the release of a book from John Bolton, Trump’s longest serving national security advisor. There is so much in the book, but I’ll highlight several of the most intense quotes from his hour long interview with ABC News. Maybe the most relevant is Bolton’s potential role in Trump’s impeachment hearing. The President’s withheld Congressionally approved funds to U.S. ally Ukraine in order to get them to make an announcement about an investigation into Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden:

But he wanted a probe of Joe Biden in exchange for delivering the security assistance that was part of the congressional legislation that had been passed several years before. So that in his mind, he was bargaining to get the investigation, using the resources of the federal government, which I found very disturbing.

And I found it using national security to advance his own political position. Now, in the course of the impeachment affair, the defense of the president was he cares about the general corruption in the Ukraine. And that was on his mind. That's utter nonsense.

So why didn’t he testify when the House requested it (and essentially subpoenaed him)? Bolton says:
Because minds -- because minds were made up on Capitol Hill. And my feeling was in the midst of all the chaos that had been created, this would have come and gone, and nobody would have paid any attention to it.

He might be right. I have been consistently shocked at what Trump’s core ~35% base will allow. However, he did not have the right to make that call himself. Instead of being the upper level figure who could confirm Trump did make that quid pro quo, Bolton stayed silent, only offering to testify to Republicans in the Senate once it was clear they weren’t going to ask for testimony. Then Bolton took a $2 million advance to write his book, The Room Where it Happened.

Instead, Bolton insists the impeachment should have been more broad, focusing on things that we didn’t know until now, like this:

It's not a policy to say, "I want a big trade deal with China." What are the terms of the trade deal? He focused on terms like China buying more agricultural products, which he said to Xi Jinping directly would help him in the farm states

And another relating to China’s dictator Xi Jinping:

Well, again the circumstances were such: ZTE [a Chinese telecom giant] was violating American laws with respect to Iran sanctions and the disclosure that they were making. And Secretary Wilbur Ross of the Commerce Department imposed penalties on ZTE. These were not penalties that were harsher on ZTE than they would've been for an American company doing exactly the same thing.

And in the course of a conversation with Xi Jinping, the president said he'd rescind the penalties for basically in exchange for nothing. I mean, it's one thing if you had a clear foreign policy rationale to downplay a criminal or regulatory proceeding because of a larger strategic interest.

Essentially he would remove lawful penalties just to curry “a favor” with Xi. And here’s yet another example of that with another of America’s advisories:

By the time we left Singapore, he was at 2,000 [referring to the number of pressing coming along]. And I think that number went up from there. That's what he was focused on. That he had had this enormous photo opportunity -- first time an American president has met with the leader of North Korea.

And he got enormous attention from it. I thought it was a strategic mistake. The U.S. itself got nothing from that. Donald Trump got a lot. The United States gave much more legitimacy to this dictator. And didn't accomplish anything toward any meaningful discussion on the elimination of their nuclear weapons program.

And another example of what Bolton calls “obstruction of justice as a way of life”:

Well, there were any number of conversations between the president and [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan of Turkey on the subject of Halkbank. And what Erdogan wanted was basically a settlement that would take the pressure off Halkbank. And let's be clear, what Halkbank had done was violate U.S. laws respecting sanctions on Iran.

So if this had been a U.S. financial institution, we would've toasted them, and quite properly so. So it was not a case where Halkbank was being treated by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York more harshly than an American bank. It was just really looking for the same kind of treatment.

And the president said to Erdogan at one point, "Look, those prosecutors in New York are Obama people. Wait till I get my people in and then we'll take care of this." And I thought to myself -- and I'm a Department of Justice alumnus myself -- "I've never heard any president say anything like that. Ever."

And one last pair of quotes, which is essentially his call to action for Americans:

And I think the concern I have speaking as a conservative Republican is that once the election is over, if the president wins, the political constraint is gone. And because he has no philosophical grounding, there's no telling what will happen in a second term.
[...]
I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn't plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can't recall from.

Now Bolton, a lifelong Republican hawk is not planning on voting for Joe Biden. He said he’ll be writing a different name in. That and voting 3rd party (something I’ve done more than not for the presidency) is also a reasonable option for any disaffected voter. I'll end the obstruction of justice section with the most recent story on this front. Last week it was announced that Trump approved US Attorney the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman, who had been leading several investigations into Mr. Trump and his associates (including Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen and his current personal attorney Rudy Giuliani) was “stepping down”.

However, after Attorney General Barr made that announcement, Berman made a statement that he had no plans to step down and that he had learned about Barr’s announcement from watching news reports of it. The next day Barr clarified that "Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so." Soon after that, Trump claimed he had no role in the firing saying "That's his [Barr’s] department, not my department. I'm not involved." It’s unclear exactly what happened, but it is clear that the Trump administration no longer had confidence in him and did not want to be explicit about why. And this does not happen in a vacuum. Since the impeachment trial ended, Trump has removed witnesses Lt Col Alexander Vindman (and his twin brother) from their post along with Gordon Sondland, former ambassador to the E.U. (and several others whose firings were unclear). It’s obvious the President, who blocked all subpoenas to the White House, does not appreciate their candor.

5) The final topic from this week is possibly the core of Donald Trump’s self-absorption. He is obsessed with his popularity. Not to be mistaken by the common trait of most modern politicians who closely watch the polls to see where the path of least resistance would be. Instead, Trump seems to only be obsessed with the core who are obsessed with him. He seems to ignore the majority of Americans who do not approve. In fact, his first lie as president was over the crowd size at his inauguration. He pulled out his first (of four) Press Secretary Sean Spicer to make a surprise late night press conference defending Trump’s claim that 1.5 million people attended the inauguration (estimates put it closer to 200,000). It was a surreal moment that such efforts were made to lie about something so unimportant and easily measured.

Even before his inauguration, Trump was saying his election was a “massive landslide victory”. My initial reaction to Trump’s unexpected win was to blame the polling, which consistently showed Hillary Clinton in the lead. But instead I should have blamed myself for not having a better understanding of what polls are. In reality, the 2016 polls were as accurate as polling usually is. Which is to say, they were pretty accurate. The night before the 2016 presidential election Clinton was up by about 3%. Comparably Obama was up by more than double that, 7% in 2008 the night before he won. It’s also worth noting that Clinton’s lead narrowed in the weeks before election for at least two reasons: 1) Trump got unusually more popular among his own party in the final weeks and 2) 10 days before the election James Comey announced the FBI investigation Clinton campaign was reopened. So things were in flux.

This is not to take away from the incredible surprise I felt the night he won. I have no doubt it will go down as one of biggest political upsets in modern history. But a huge part of the reason it was surprising and the reason it was hard to predict is that it was so close. By any measure it was not a landslide victory. Putting aside the obvious fact that Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million people, the largest ever (and yet still winning the election). His electoral victory was actually well below average. In fact, if you rank all electoral victories his ranks in the bottom 20%.

Since his election, he has actually gotten less popular. He received 46% of the popular vote (and this was also the percentage of people who approved of him on his inauguration day). Today, and every single day after his inauguration, he has been below that number. Trump loves to criticize the polls that don’t favor him. In fact, he did it again this week saying “@FoxNews is out with another of their phony polls, done by the same group of haters that got it even more wrong in 2016. Watch what happens in November. Fox is terrible!” But the reality is that President Donald Trump is consistently the least popular sitting President in my lifetime. Here’s a neat visual of him compared to previous presidents (Trump is the green line):

Conclusion

Politicians and especially presidents regularly use their own version of the truth to meet their policy ends. Bush was overconfident about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and used that to follow a strong policy preference. Obama overplayed the success of Obamacare and underplayed its impact on Americans who did not want to participate. But I do not believe these two Presidents regularly and intentionally attempted to undermine the concept of truth to further their own celebrity.

I’ve tried to focus on just news stories that have come out in the last week and yet it feels like I had to write my own book just to get my head around it. This has just reminded me why I haven’t tried to tackle any major topics on the blog in the last several years. Luckily this week has given me some extra time and writing this has helped me pull together a lot of my own thoughts over the last 3 years.

By the typing of this sentence, President Trump made 19,128 false or misleading claims in 1,226 days (it will likely be higher before anyone is able to read this). That’s an average of 15 a day! I mentioned the writing of this to a friend who also used to blog back when blogging was cool (or at least we hoped so). Justin suggested I read this research from the RAND Corporation on the idea of “firehosing” as a way of government propaganda. Here’s their definition:

model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions.

Lie a lot and with abandon. Firehosing is a power move. You say so many outrageous things so many times that your opponents look like fools just for engaging. And as we have all felt, it’s exhausting. It took me much longer to write this than it took for Trump to say the things I’m fact checking (and I’m just citing those who have already done the hard fact checking work) . The craziest part about this RAND article is that it wasn't about Donald Trump. It was about Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is a strategy of dictators, not democracies. Yet, this is exactly what Donald Trump does on Twitter, in interviews, and especially with his campaigning team on 24 hour news citing “alternative facts”. I think this helps explain while even though Donald Trump has the lowest rating, he also has the most consistent. There is not very much room for dissenting voices. The propaganda is “Rapid, Continuous, and Repetitive”. Or what Trump’s former White House Chief Strategist Steven Bannon called it in 2018, “flood the zone with shit.”

So how can you counter this? How can you “expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth”? You can’t. “Instead, put raincoats on those at whom the firehose is aimed.” The research on Firehosing suggests one main strategy, “Forewarning”:

Propagandists gain advantage by offering the first impression, which is hard to overcome. If, however, potential audiences have already been primed with correct information, the disinformation finds itself in the same role as a retraction or refutation: disadvantaged relative to what is already known.

When people resist persuasion or influence, that act reinforces their preexisting beliefs. It may be more productive to highlight the ways in which Russian propagandists attempt to manipulate audiences, rather than fighting the specific manipulations.

My hope for myself and anyone willing to read this far is that by seeing just a single week of Trump’s Russian style propaganda, we have protected ourselves just a little. The final suggestion for dealing with Firehosing is the “turn down the flow”. In my case, that means removing myself from the dopamine addiction of righteous outrage about Trump’s most recent attempt to bait me. I remind myself though our country is more divided politically than any other time in my life, we are not more divided on most other topics (see graph).

It’s for that reason I’m encouraged by a nation that has made hard sacrifices to protect the most vulnerable during the Covid-19 pandemic (despite how quickly the nation was burned out by it, for reasons discussed earlier). I’m encouraged by the outpouring of support nationwide to say that Black Lives Matter (despite Trump’s own inability to comfort a nation mourning). I’m encouraged by the schools in Greenville (including the one where I teach) and improv theater communities throughout the country (including the one where I perform) as we have all worked together through an incredibly challenging time.

The word I’ve come back to over the last few months is TRUST. In a time of crisis, people flock to it. I know I’ve tried very hard to earn the trust of my family, friends, school, and theater in my words and actions. The opposite is also true. When we cannot trust someone in power, it only causes more anxiety. Richard Neustadt, a political scientist specializing in the American presidency once highlighted that because the role of the President does not have the actual power to pass laws or change the constitution, real “Presidential power is the power to persuade”. President Donald Trump cannot persuade anyone who does not already agree with him, because he cannot be trusted.

We are NOT the Walking Dead

2019-08-26T22:29:00.001-04:00

Sometime in the early 2000's I heard about a new comic book series about zombies. Being a fan of the genre I was especially excited to read that the author planned to continue the series indefinitely. To create an ever expanding apocalyptic world.

15 years and 193 issues later the series has come to an end. In the final act Rick announces to a crowd, "We are NOT the Walking Dead!". This parallels an important moment very early in the series when Rick says the same line, but without the "not". It's then that the writers reveal that in this world all humans, no matter how they die, become zombies.

Reading the end of this series, feeling the "NOT" in the last speech, made me so happy. The world they created moved beyond survival. Mirroring the comic books themselves, the characters had created something bigger than themselves. The positive ending also struck a familiar chord with my life the last few days. With school starting back and my extended paternity leave ending, this last weekend was still wonderfully boring.

We went on our first family walk downtown in quite a while (now featuring bike riders). Had tacos and ice cream. Finished off the original Batman Animated Series with my children. Played some basketball with friends. Had s'mores with family. Rejoined the original improv team I help form 8 years ago. My new church celebrated our 3 year birthday. So many everyday joys.

I won't spoil the book series, but the theme of legacy is strong. Rick is a character who creates something that extends beyond his own life. This is one of my core missions. It's how I view education. It's how I view my improv theater. And it's how I view being a husband and father. Build and add. Part of me felt energized by the finale. A push to go out and grow my worlds bigger. I do plan to do that. Even more I felt a sense of, if I can quote another recent meaningful series ender, that I can "rest now".

I'm writing this to commemorate the deep feeling of gratitude I've been feeling lately. At 34 I've already done more than I thought I ever would. If this is the best it ever gets, if this happens to be the end of what I have now, I want to say I enjoyed the good old days while I was in them. We are NOT the walking dead. Right now, we are alive. And so, I'll leave you with the last page of the series.

Economics of Organ Donation (and Trade)

2018-08-25T22:17:00.001-04:00

"many trades as you can possibly make because that's what a market's for"

Takeaways from "Long-Form Improvisation and the Art of Zen"

2018-02-03T21:31:00.003-05:00

As I've done several time before (especially when this blog was more active), here are some takeaways from a book I recently finished: Long-Form Improvisation and the Art of Zen. Some of this is items directly from the text and some are just thoughts inspired by it.

I'm reading this book to keep myself fresh as I teach the Alchemy Comedy Theater's inaugural Improv 601 class. It's mean to be a conservatory culmination of our previous 5 levels. It had a submission process and only acceptance 6 students. Each January the plan is for the current Artistic Director to end their 1 year term with this class and "graduate" a new class of veterans. Although this book is far from my favorite on the topic, I really appreciate that it's essentially Jason Chin's blog of thoughts on long-form improv (in fact the last third is literally just excerpts from his blog).

Jason was the reason why I purchased this book a while back. He tragically died very young a few years ago and I had always appreciated his perspective and performance whenever we crossed paths. He was so well loved he even has his own improv holiday. The only time I was in a classroom setting with him was while I was in Chicago for a summer doing the iO summer intensive (I believe the best deal in improv training) and he did a lecture/discussion about the history of improvisation. It was great.

Here's a great excerpt from the book:

In the Godfather movie, Michael Corleone dispassionately discusses his assassination of Sollozzo and the police captain, McCulsky. "It's not personal," he says, "It's business." The novel, however, goes one step further: "Tom, don't let anyone kid you. It's all personal, every bit of business."

It reminded me of the classic Del Close quote:

"Nothing we say to each other is innocent of emotional manipulation. Everything that we do on stage, is to effect each other, in some way and if we notice, very carefully, how those swine we are working with are trying to get to us and get at us. Sometimes I suggest we perform on stage as though we are a whole bunch of raving paranoids. -Del Close

Nothing is more difficult to build on and heighten that big choices (like for example an assassination) with no one taking it personally. Here's a good rule of thumb: inject either a little narcissism or codependence in all your characters.

Improv scenes are never really about very much, but they are always about something. Understanding all the pieces of a scene are great (Relationship, Characters, Environment). Understanding the comedic Pattern of the scene is essential. But above that, the context of the scene lies in "what the scene is really about". Jealousy. God vs. Science. Survival. Etc. That said, you won't be able to preplan or layout that large thematic concept. What an improv scene is actually about is figuring out what it's about.

Here's another quote from the book, from Bruce Lee:

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

This is not only great for the nature of how improvisers should be, it's also a good foundation for how improv shows should work. Figure what what makes the first scene it's shape (example: cup) and then pour it into another context (example: bottle).

Jason has an interesting breakdown in the terms coach or director. It encouraged me to layout definitions for Alchemy's three artistic leadership titles for the stage:

Director: Implement the mission of the theater on stage
Coach: Implement the mission of the team (as stated by the theater)
Coordinator: Encourage the members of the team to implement the mission of the team (as stated by the theater)

Similarly, here are how I've now defined the leadership roles off stage:

Producer: Implement the mission of the theater off stage
Manager: Implement the mission of the night (as stated by the theater)
Facilitator: Encourage the attenders of the event implement the mission of the event (as stated by the theater)

Jason was adamant about doing note sessions after shows (something I've done with success at other theaters). However, at Alchemy we have a culture of not doing that and treating the show itself as a moment of play reward for a period of hard work and practice (all of our House Teams and Company Members are required to attend a weekly practice). I think both systems can work and I wouldn't be bothered if a coach wanted to take Jason's suggestion. He also suggests that scene notes never last longer than the scene. Preach.

Hit a inspirational wall as a coach of a team? Ask yourself, "what are you learning?" and teach that. Not learning anything? Well, read a book or take a class.

Jason mentions a different book I've seen suggested several other times in multiple different contexts: Zen in the Art of Archery. Apparently it has many applications.

Here's a another great quote from the book, this one from Daisetsu Suzuki:

Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes artless art, growing out of the unconscious.

For a long time I've intended this 601 class to be a kind of final review for our veteran players. From here, it will just take time to get the groves in your brain to become second nature.

The biggest (only?) advantage improv has in the entertainment industry is that it's live. For that reason it's important to treat the audiences like heroes and performances like lightning in a bottle. In addition, improv theaters also need to do all the things other forms of entertainment do. Be organized, be professional, be on time, etc. From the author: "Improv [sometimes] lacks follow through".

Near the end of the book there is a list of ten suggestions. His number one is Listen. I don't think I've seen a list that didn't have some form of that at number one. The only thing I'd add to that is the other simultaneous number one rule. Act. If you're really listening and they're really saying something, then you'll really have a reaction.

With so many quotes of other people, I'll end with one from the author, Jason Chin, in the afterward of the book:

Improv is a fascinating art form that continues to evolve and mutate. I believe the trend is toward longer and longer shows with smaller and smaller casts (in number, not height) which allows for more intimate emotions and intense performances.

I agree. The graduation showcase for our 601 class will be duo monoscenes on Friday, February 23rd. At just 55 pages this isn't really an improv book, but more a collection of Jason Chin's thoughts on the topic. I'd be interested to read more mini-takes like this.

Mother's Day: Positive Impact of Siblings on Divorce Rate

2017-05-14T23:39:00.002-04:00

Here's one my greatest pieces of gratitude to my mom from myself (and the mother of my own children). Thanks for having so many kids:

Researcher Doug Downey observed adults who grew up as an only child were least likely to marry. Those who did marry were the most at risk for divorce than adults who grew up with at least one sibling.

Adults who grew up with one or two siblings, that is in a family of four or five total, had pretty much similar divorce rates.

While there were only minimal divorce-prevention gains with family size of up to three siblings, in families with four to seven siblings lower divorce rates in adulthood were pronounced.

In fact, with 7 Brookie kids, my parents hit the number just right! Here's one guess on why:

children who grow up with multiple siblings have more opportunities to learn how to negotiate differences. They've had to learn how to live harmoniously with others

They not only have to learn to deal with the bad, they get more good:

In large families younger children receive loving attention from not just two parents but many older siblings as well. If they fall down, many hands reach down to help them up. If they aim to accomplish a goal, whether it’s learning to throw a ball or succeeding at a school athletic event, many sibs are there to coach and assist them, and many voices then chime in to celebrate their victories.

And it continues into adulthood:

When illness strikes, there’s an unexpected job loss, or grief besets adults, adult siblings can come to the rescue. Their help can lower the stress on the sibling with the problem and his her spouse.

That doesn't even count the benefits of your siblings spouses as additional siblings. With underpopulation looming, if you're able, my armchair suggestion is to have one more kid than you think you can handle, then drop what's necessary to keep your sanity. I'm not only am excited about trying to create my own clan, I'm sure the benefits 14 first cousins (more than half in town) are also measurably positive!

Bonus link: Various other correlations of divorce rates

There's No Money in Improv (Directly)

2017-03-19T22:49:00.000-04:00

Alchemy held our bi-annual auditions and company meeting today and here was a quote I emphasized. From Miles Stroth:

Improv is not something you make money doing. It’s a skill set that hopefully one day will be rewarded better commercially or financially. But people love it because it’s a fucking art form. But there’s not money is doing it well. There’s money is translating the skill set you learn doing it into other things.

Alchemy in Audio

2017-03-05T17:10:00.000-05:00

I've been lucky enough to be interviewed in a handful of podcasts mostly discussing the local improv theater that I run. If you'd like to get a better idea of how it works and my personal vision for it, here are a few options:

There It Is: "Harrison talks with Jason about improv, his time at Clemson University and in Chapel Hill, NC at DSI, starting the Alchemy Comedy Theater, juggling running a theater with his other part-time job, and the New South Comedy Festival"
Improv in Action: "Sebastian and Jim sit down with Harrison Brookie of Alchemy Comedy Theater and discuss what it is to run an improv theatre in Greenville SC."
Stories of the Upstate: About my younger days as a "lovable little buddy as a teen, pretty irresponsible and pretty fun" and how that led to opening a comedy theater.
Greenville Comedy Marathon Panel: "Part of the Greenville Comedy Marathon, an annual marathon put on by Alchemy Comedy. It was moderated by Alchemy Artistic Director, Harrison Brookie, and features Meg Pierson, Todd Janssen, Tom Emmons, Traysie Amick, and Carrie Adams!"

Bonus non-improv topic with improv people... I Was Just About to Say That: "This week we have an equally educational and enjoyable episode with a very special guest, Harrison Brookie, who is a local high school teacher and improviser extraordinaire. We're talking the top 5 US presidents with the first name James."

Politics As Religion

2017-02-28T23:55:00.002-05:00

I'm catching up on my "Conversations with (Economist) Tyler Cowen" podcasts (earlier on Tyler). Here's a great quote from an interview with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt:

National politics is different from local. National politics, I believe, is much more like religion than local politics is. If you take it all the way down to the very local level — who the dogcatcher is, who the treasurer is of the town — that’s all very practical stuff. People are very worried about their property values and things like that. It’s not very ideological. National politics is much more like a religion. The president is the high priest of the American civil religion

And to be clear, I think this is mostly a negative.

Why I Was Wrong About Trump's Victory (But Not Necessarily About His Presidency)

2017-02-04T00:09:00.000-05:00

My brief streak of correctly predicting the presidency while never actually voting for the winner has ended. Donald Trump is now the 45th President of the US and few saw it coming (not even Trump). Last week I got to do a second presentation to my campus to update them on my own prediction failure and help them process why exactly the polls and national media were so wrong. Here was my explanation:

The Polls Weren't Wrong
When I first spoke to my school in late October, Clinton had about a 70% chance of winning in the polls. We all forgot the implication that 30% is not zero and far from it. He had a 1/3 chance of winning, which is still pretty possible. Secondly, the polls were off, but the 2016 polls were actually slightly more accurate than the 2012 ones. Only in 2012, the polling error didn't change the outcome. Here's an eerie title from Nate Silver (who I vowed to never link again) just 4 days before the election: "Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton". And finally, last minute undecided voters (who can't be measured well) did seem to shift towards Trump (was it Comey, Russia, Johnson, or likely Clinton's fault?).

Very Very Close Election
It looks now that Hillary Clinton is going to get more than 2.9 million votes than Donald Trump. In fact, if you convince 38,595 Trump voters in close states to switch to Clinton she wins. That's close. But of course the Electoral College system choses the president. That was relatively close too. Trump's victory is 46th out of 58 in past presidential elections.

No Obama 3rd Term
The now well known "Prediction Professor" has a successful 13 yes or no question system for predicting a win (in this case, a Trump win). You can read them all here, but most of them come down to much larger factors beyond the candidates themselves. Very rarely does a political party get 3rd term in the presidency (it takes a Jefferson, Jackson, or Roosevelt) and it seems now it was Clinton's election to lose. If fact, I think Biden was the Dems only chance.

Party Loyalty Trumped (Literally)
The most surprising thing for me this season was just how little Trump's surprises mattered. Since his initial Birther claims in 2011 and every unelectable thing he did since, I'd assumed he couldn't win. I assumed the Republican base would not get behind someone who wasn't a Republican just a few years ago. I assumed... well you know what happens...

81% of white evangelicals supported Trump, more than voted for last 3 Republicans (looks like they didn't read my post on the abortion)
Hispanics and African Americans voted for Trump more than the last Republican (at the end of the day, Hillary was no Obama)
Midwest/Rust Belt (PA, MI, WI, OH) voted with what they hoped for their wallet over any dreams of social justice
Rural America is underrepresented in our nationally culture, but purposefully overrepresented in the Electoral College, and voted for Trump by a huge margin

You can see the rural/urban divide in the nation, my home state, and even in my precinct here in the city of Greenville

Trump won in at least part because he was Trump, and if there's one thing his first 2 weeks as President prove, he's still Trump.

Six Presidential Candidates on My Ballot Not Named Trump

2016-11-08T02:37:00.002-05:00

I'm fairly certain I would vote for any Democrat or Republican presidential candidate since 2000 over both of the two main presidential candidates this year. Both Trump and Clinton have set records for being unfavorable, even among their own party (and especially with millennial voters like myself). If you remember back when this blog was regularly updated, I may have won $20 from family members in the each of the last 2 presidential elections and it looks like I'm about to be right again (though I was admitted way wrong about how far Trump would go in the primary and will likely break even this year).

Not too much has changed about my own personal political beliefs, though I have moved slightly the opposite of how you might expect based on my region (since I moved from NC to SC) and my age. However, like many voters, this presidential election season has been confounding. That's why, I'd like to make the case for 7 different options for Election Day (today):

Options 1-6) Vote for any of the other 6 candidates (at least on the SC ballot) not named Donald Trump. There's been plenty written to try and convince others to not vote for him. In fact, here's a good summary from fellow early 2000's blogger/friend Justin Scott. Though I should mention that his post was a little over a month ago so there's plenty more to add to the list. I got a chance to see conservative NYT columnist David Brooks here in Greenville a few weeks ago and he concisely stated that "Trump is the wrong solution to a right problem". If you'd like to get some real sympathy for why at least 40% of voters in the country is planning to vote for him, the Cracked Podcast has a great discussion (here's the shorter list version). I actually got a chance to do a short informational presentation on the election to the two campuses of my high school (one fairly urban and one very rural) and you could feel the stark difference (even in the historically very conservative Upstate of SC).

As for the other 6 candidates, they've gone through SC's fairly stringent process of getting on the ballot:

In South Carolina, political parties can conduct primaries. Filing requirements for presidential primaries are set by the parties themselves. An independent presidential candidate must petition for placement on the general election ballot. The petition must contain signatures totaling 5 percent of all registered state voters. Write-in candidates are not permitted.

I'd suggest that if someone has gone through the proper channels to legally appear on your ballot, then they are open to vote for them. That's not just my opinion, that's the law. There are certainly arguments of spoiler candidates, but that's only if you are first obligated to a party or candidate. If that means the party you normally side with "lost your vote" then you're now showing your vote matters. Hopefully that party won't make the same mistake again. So here are the non-Trump candidates:

1) Hillary Clinton (Democrat): Despite all the email scandals (there are actually several different ones involving several different people), I still think Clinton would make a much better president than Donald Trump. Comparisons aside, she was a relatively innocuous Senator so much so she was approved as Secretary of State 94–2. It wasn't until she became a candidate for president in 2008 that she became such a pariah to conservatives (or even Trump himself).

2) Gary Johnson (Libertarian): Having voted for him in the last presidential election he was easily my first choice. His Vice Presidential pick is even better than his last one 4 years ago. I think Johnson would make a very competent and fairly moderate president. He's the only candidate I've heard in decade reminding voters that the president can't actually pass laws and has to work with Congress (one of Obama's major pitfalls). I'd also nominate him for most likely to balance the budget.

3) Jill Stein (Green): She might be the only candidate on this list I might call into question. Her policies are health, energy, and debt are very concerning. However, I believe her and Gary Johnson are the only candidates openly calling for shrinking the federal military and decreasing US involvement in nation building overseas.

4) Darrell Castle (Constitution): I don't know a lot about Castle as a candidate, but my understanding of Constitution Party is that it is a more religiously conservative version of the Libertarian Party. If you appreciate Gary Johnson's honest efforts to shrink the size of the federal government, I believe Castle will push for similar things economically. However, they divide over issues like abortion, LGBT rights and other issues where the Constitution falls more traditionally.

5) Peter Skewes (American Party): I know nothing about Skewes personally, but the entire vision of the American Party is incredibly appealing, especially in this election. This was a party actually founded right here in SC with the mission of leading from the middle. Here's a quote from their site: "The central focus of the American Party is to increase the economic global competitiveness of our states and our country, by focusing on the implementation of common ground solutions".

6) Evan McMullin (Independent): The true wildcard among wildcards Evan may be the only 3rd party candidate to carry a state since Ross Perot in the 90's. Right now as a completely independent candidate he's polling above Hillary Clinton in Utah and drawing 24% from Trump in a state the Republicans carried handedly in 2012. If there's no majority in the electoral college, it could get interesting.

7) Don't vote. It's your right to vote and it's just as much your right not to vote. If there are no candidates that represent enough of your views accurately, then no outcome will express your voice. Plus you have a 1 in 60 million chance of making a difference. 1 in 10 million if you're in a swing state. Wasted votes aren't votes that don't make a difference. No one vote has ever made the difference in a presidential election. A wasted vote is one for a candidate that you do not want to be president. Which is why studies shows we mostly vote for our own personal or communal feeling of satisfaction (same reason I watched baseball for the first time in a decade on Game 7). In fact, after reading over "Why I Voted" from 8 years ago, not a lot has changed for me and plus, voter apathy may actually be a positive.

Like the Greenville News (who endorsed Romney last time), this year I'm not endorsing any candidate. I think all non-Trump candidates would be passable. My vote however will go to Hillary Clinton, who like her husband, policy-wise might turn out to be the boring president I've always wanted. And the policy issues we do disagree on (and there are plenty), I'm confident our system of Federalism and other two branches will do what they were made for (as I discussed on the issue of abortion just a few hours ago). It's also important to me how Trump loses. Whether it's a small loss or a big one likely determine whether we see a Trump/Christie type Republican Party in 2020 or my dream new version of the party with candidates like Kasich/Weld on the ticket. This also means I will have voted for 3 different parties in 4 different presidential elections. It feels good not to be tied to a party, which are at the end of the day just private organizations that nominate candidates for office. Instead I vote for who I think would be the best chief executive, a suggestion I got from Libertarian Vice Presidential candidate Bill Weld.

Abortion Issue is a The Red Herring

2016-11-07T23:49:00.001-05:00

There are very few (on either side of the aisle) that see abortion as a celebration. It is a difficult, deeply personal, and delicate issue with real weight for individuals, families, and communities. For that reason I believe the laws governing abortion and those at impact abortion at the federal and state levels are very important, but the actual impact federal elections have on abortion laws are way overstated. I say that as someone who has personally been guilty of voting for candidates based on their public stances on the issue. Let's take a step back and get some historical context on the issue.

Before the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, about half of the states banned abortion. However, in that decision, 7 of 9 justices agreed that state bans violated the privacy rights of the mother. Since then, the Republicans have gradually increased their use of the issue to gain favor with the evangelical community. However, what they fail to admit is their own role in the Roe v. Wade decision. Here's the breakdown of justices' decision (and which party's president appointed them):

SUPPORT
Harry A. Blackmun (Republican)
William J. Brennan (Republican)
Warren Earl Burger (Republican)
William Orville Douglas (Democrat)
Thurgood Marshall (Democrat)
Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr. (Republican)
Potter Stewart (Republican)

DISSENT
William H. Rehnquist (Republican)
Byron R. White (Democrat)

The decision was made by an overwhelmingly conservative court with only two dissenters (one from each party appointment). You can actually read the conservative language in the decision that was framed as an issue of personal privacy and liberty:

This “substantive due process” right to privacy permits a woman to terminate her pregnancy for any reason during the first trimester. Subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the state may reasonably regulate abortions in ways related to maternal health. After viability, the state may regulate or proscribe abortions, but it must permit them if found necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother

And the court has kept a conservative majority for 45 years. Meanwhile, restrictions on abortion have come from the states, as the Roe v. Wade decision intended. As abortion made its way into the third presidential debate, like almost every issue in this election, it was more about personality than actually policy.

Forty-one states have some form of restriction on abortion, 36 of those ban it after viability (24ish weeks or before). That's 80% of the country that bans abortion at least at viability (with another 11% banning it at 29 weeks or the third trimester) and even for those states that allow abortion in the third trimester, it almost never happens. Though it's worth noting, third trimester (and even partial birth abortion is something Trump supported openly into his mid 60's and it's not like he has a good record of agreeing with Republican leadership these days. Here's a stat on third term abortions from the not liberal Fox News:

only about 100 are performed in the third trimester (more than 24 weeks' gestation), approximately .01 percent of all abortions performed.

This is part of the reason why abortion rates have fallen to nearly half of what they were in 1980's under Republican presidents. Before you suggest that this decrease in abortions is the result of decades of non-compromising hard fought conservative actions, remember, all of those state laws were purposefully allowed for in the original conservative Roe v. Wade decision. In fact, most of these decreases aren't due to regulation, but through "liberal" policies aimed at decreasing extreme poverty and unintended pregnancy (most women who have an abortion already have kids).

My goal is not to decrease the importance we place on life or the privacy of our female citizens. Instead I just want us to have a more realistic view of what abortion actually looks like (early and rarer and rarer) and what impact politicians actually have (very little). You can think the issue important (I do), but if the candidate either will not or can not actually impact the laws, then it's disingenuous for it to be a primary factor in your decision.

Hearing from God, Speaking for God

2016-08-10T09:24:00.001-04:00

The Introduction

Eight years ago this month I asked the readers of this blog what types of criteria they had for choosing a church. Rereading that short post and the comments put me back in the mindset of that time when we had just moved to the Research Triangle Park of NC. Here’s me in the comments of that post: “We are pretty much only looking at PCA churches. Not because we think those are the only good churches, but because we both really agree with their doctrinal foundations.” We ended up doing just that. We chose what turned out to be a great church with great doctrine and stayed there for about 3 years. However, when we decided to move back to our hometown and start the church search over again, I had similar criteria, but a much different order of importance. Back in Greenville we ended up going to a great church with great community. For the last four years we’ve been involved in what is essentially of church of a dozen people (connected to a larger church gathering).

As you can imagine, choosing a church based on organizational structure and size does not always create a community of like minded individuals. That’s led to some difficult, but beneficial conversations. We’ve baptized our two infants in a church that believes that sacrament is for those with a profession of faith. We’ve worked through church leadership and discipleship differences. Wrestling through those types of disagreements with a group of kindhearted friends has been wonderful. However, one issue that’s long been difficult to come to a place of mutual acceptance is the issue of God’s literal voice in our life. It’s deeply personal and obviously supernatural which makes the conversation complicated. I warn you, the rest of this post is painfully insider baseball. I’ll also assume that scripture is the authoritative source on the issue. Whether you believe that’s true or not, it’s certainly reasonable to say that for those who do submit to scripture as “God breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), that it should also be useful for useful for “teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”. So if you’re not actively involved in a church, this will likely feel like long meaningless minutiae (and I’m not 100% that you’d be wrong).

The Point

Before the Fall of Mankind, God had regular interactions with Adam and Eve, but immediately after sin entered the world, God’s presence causes fear (Genesis 3:8-9). From then on, even into the New Testament with John the Baptist, there is a trend of God slowly but surely directing the world to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God’s voice takes many forms, but they are overwhelmingly fantastical. Whether it’s a blinding light from heaven (Acts 9:1-7), voice from the storm (Job 38), burning bush that didn’t burn (Exodus 3), the sound of many waters (Ezekiel 43:2, Revelation 1:15), harps in the background (Revelation 14:2), dense cloud of thunder and lightning with an increasingly loud trumpet blast (Exodus 19), or even the visual that heaven is being torn open (Mark 1:9-11). There are also mysterious dreams of an unbeliever (Genesis 41:1-57) interpreted by Joseph and even overwhelming day dreams, or visions (Numbers 24:4). Even when angels arrive, they often have to tell people to not to be afraid. When Moses returned from Mount Sinai after receiving the Ten Commandments, his own face was so bright it scared everyone and he had to put a veil over it (Exodus 34:29-35). In fact, the people of Israel actually requested that God stop speaking directly to them because it felt like they are going to die (Deuteronomy 18:16).

There are also times where the hearer doesn’t seem to be overwhelmed, but in all those they are eventually certain it’s God (1 Samuel 3). The only example I could find of God speaking and not everyone understanding was when his voice was mistaken by some for loud thunder (John 12:23-29). Even in the well known example of God speaking in a “still small voice”, it was only after a strong wind blows apart rocks, an earthquake, and a fire (1 Kings 19:11-13). In fact, that verse seems to show that there are exceptions to the rule of fantastical presentations of God’s voice, but that it’s still a pretty good general rule. It seems there was some truth to Alanis Morissette as God in the obviously not canonical movie Dogma. God’s voice can be mind blowing.

I do believe that gift of the Holy Spirit does make all Christians today kind of like prophets (Acts 4:25), but even prophets didn’t have a direct line of God. Think of David, who is one of the central figures of the Old Testament, had the Spirit speak through him, and was a man after God’s own heart. Yet God sent another prophet, Nathan, to give him a message (2 Samuel 7). Even to the major prophets there doesn’t seem to be a regular back and forth conversation: Noah (5), Abraham (8), Isaac (2), Rebekah (1), Jacob (7). The reason you knows those names is that they were so noteworthy. That they heard from God. In fact in the Complete Red Letter Edition of the Bible has, “the direct spoken words of God are indicated in red on both the Old and New Testaments”. Like Jesus’ time on Earth, God’s interactions are numerable. God created everything, but God isn’t everything. He can be present in a specific place and time to have a large supernatural impact. How often that’s happened would be impossible to determine. It’s not obvious what is not seen or recorded in scripture (or since scripture), but there are definitely times of radio silence (1 Samuel 3). It’s also worth mentioning that although God definitely cares about the individual, his plans has always been for His people. When he gave a message to a follower, whether Old Testament or New, it was rarely if ever about personal issues that would only impact their lives.

Few people I have spoken to claim to hear the voice of God in the ways previously listed. Instead they have heard the voice of God stir inside them. Like the prophets, it’s an internal truth that they verbalize. This was in fact the primary means of communication God has used throughout the Bible all the way to and including his Son (Hebrews 1). If you count the Bible as God’s word then God has been pretty much using humans as his almost exclusive means of communication throughout history. For that reason, He doesn’t take the title of prophet lightly. If someone claims to speak for God and directs others those to disobey Him then they are obviously not a prophet from God and there is a death sentence (Deuteronomy 13). Another danger is one who predicts a future outcome, but that does not come true (Deuteronomy 18:15-22). God says they will be revealed to be true or false in time and if it turns out to be not from God he also puts out a warrant for their death. Even Jesus’ Apostles in the New Testament were specifically given the ability to do the supernatural and “confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it” (Mark 16:20).

The Conclusion

There was a time when I was concerned that a lot of people I knew were teetering on the edge of false prophecy. Claiming the voice of God where the evidence did not seem to support it. However, like is true in many prejudices, the more you get to know someone the better you understand the nuance of their perspective. I’ve come to much more benign conclusion. I actually don’t think many people claim this kind of experience with God. I think what they mean is that they feel led in a direction that doesn’t feel of their of their own mind. That’s great. I believe that. Say that. I experience that regularly. Just this morning I felt an external push to get up early to help my wife get the kids going. I’m confident the Spirit plays a role in this un-Harrison-like service, even if it’s just the lessons I’ve learned speaking to me from the past. And like David needing to hear from Samuel, it seems clear that sin can make this support from the Spirit more difficult. My concern is in placing an extra religious significance on personal decisions especially in placing these kinds of supernatural experiences above the day to day interaction with God’s word, His people, and His world. No one in the Bible ever says “I think God said this”. We live in the already Jesus, but not yet return of Jesus (Revelation 21:1). We won’t get the Garden of Eden back until the New Garden arrives. God has spoken to mankind and he has used mankind to speak for him. I’m also not discounting that he could speak today. After all, the kingdom is here (Matthew 3).

What I propose is to be more cautious with our vocabulary. I can think of few things more dangerous than claiming to speak for God. Simply say “I believe this or that”. Or say “I have the Holy Spirit and I believe this”. Let your yes be yes and your no be no, but don’t claim more than you have a right to (Matthew 5:37). The Holy Spirit does give you a taste of heaven, but it doesn’t give us the right to speak for heaven. I’m hesitant to even say the spirit is leading me, because that does happen, but it’s not for us to know exactly how and when (Ecclesiastes 11:5). And finally use scripture (2 Timothy 3:16-17) or the by a group of Christians (Matthew 18:16) to back of claims.

I want to clear. I do not want anything here to close anyone off to the influence of God. I’m not sure I could even if I wanted to. My hope is the opposite. This study has helped me appreciate the times in my life where I did feel the leading of God (if only retroactively). The best decisions I’ve made thus far in my life (teaching career, marriage, improv, kids, etc) were made with the oversight and influence of the Almighty. God has never spoken to me directly, but I’m not opposed to the possibility that it will happen. However, I expect to be confident if I do hear it.

I should state the obvious. This post is not truth from the mouth of God. Speaking so decisively on this issue was very difficult for me as I want to be sure I am not overreaching. I’ve tried to use scripture as a source, but it’s always dangerous to go looking into the word of God to prove your own predetermined point. I’d point you to read 1 Kings 13. It’s a fairly unknown story about the dangers of misspeaking for God and how they can negatively impact even innocent bystanders. I hope to use all of this as a starting point for further conversation. I started this story with a reference to old church searches. Well, we are on the search again. To be clear, our moving on has nothing to do with this conversation. I’m certainly not convinced this difference in emphasis is one worth splitting over. In fact, the success of my house church proves that few things are. Our small house church has slowly changed geographically and we now live about a half an hour away from everyone. We are once again looking for a new church and I’m confident God will direct our steps (Proverbs 16:9).

Takeaways from "Crazy Busy"

2016-04-05T16:30:00.000-04:00

These days I finish books about as often as I blog (not very much). One reason for the lack of both is busyness. This Spring Break I took some time and read "Crazy Buzy: A (mercifully) Short Book about a (really) Big Problem" by Kevin DeYong. Here are my takeaways:

Efficiency and punctuality are a part of functioning and showing respect in America, but they are not absolute virtues globally (and certainly not historically).

If you doubt the level of complexity and opportunity in America just visit the cereal aisle.

One way to combat the burden of busyness is to ensure your lifestyle has a "margin". That is, you plan to make room for the eventuality of the unplannable. To not do so is arrogance from a finite person.

A fallacy: "Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness. Obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy." -Tim Kreider of the NYT

A primary cause of busyness is pride. Ask yourself: "Am I trying to do good or to make myself look good?" I'm personally guilty of sacrificing the unconditional love of my family for the praise of those I'm less intimate with.

Jesus never ended a sermon with "do more or disobey". The original sin was not a lack of effort for God, it was an attempt to become Him.

This is not a permission to be apathetic. We should hurt for those who hurt. However, our circle of influence will always be smaller than our circle of concern.

Jesus spent 30 years in relative calm before a whirlwind 3 years of public ministry. So don't fear, Jesus (more than most pre-modern people) felt the weight you likely feel of busyness. He was constantly around the disciples, preached to thousands (without a microphone), was swamped by the sick, and sometimes even had to escape by boat. Yet, he certainly had to leave cities with more sick and hungry (literal and spiritual) to continue his larger Mission.

Busyness isn't a planning problem, it's a personal one. You must create a simple list of priorities or "unseized" time will flow towards our weakness and squeaky wheels. At the same time, we have to respect others' priorities and appreciate when we hear "no".

One of the most common American forms of busyness is Kindergarchy: Rule by children. "Children have more options and more opportunities, but parents have more worry and hassle. We have put unheard-of amounts of energy, time, and focus into our children. And yet, we assume their failures will almost certainly be our fault for not doing enough."

In his book, Selfish Reasons to Have Kids", economist Bryan Caplan (remember him?) cites numerous twin and adoption studies that conclude almost every desirable trait parents wish to pass down (health, happiness, intelligence, likeability) are more nature than nurture.

"One of the most resilient and cherished myths of parenting is that parenting creates the child" -Leslie Leyland Fields

However, Bryan Caplan does show 3 traits that can be impacted by parenting: religion, politics, and appreciation of how they were parented. So, perhaps we should just try and instill those and not stress about the others so we can "have a better life and a bigger family".

Technology helps us do more of what we want. So, it can (and often does) feed into our desire for busyness. Easy half-solution: put your phone out reach and/or create full on technology Sabbath day(s).

We actually work less and rest more than we did (farming was hard), but the two are significantly less separated. We work while we play (and visa versa) much more. I may have tried to post this near 5pm so you wouldn't read it at work.

"You can borrow time (from the future), but you can't steal it. There is no such thing as a free coffee boost.

A not very sexy, but correct, concluding point: "If you have creativity, ambition, and love, you will be busy." But how busy?

HT to my brother in law Stephen for the book!

"America doesn't have a gun problem, it has several of them"

2016-02-22T15:34:00.001-05:00

I really appreciate the nuance this video takes on the facts about guns in the US. It's not about gang violence. It's not about mass shootings. It's not about suicides. It's all of them.

This is an issue that I've really changed my views on in the last year or so. Recreational and hand guns especially (which obvious don't fit the "regulated Militia" mindset of the 2nd Amendment) are a part of our culture and that is a problem.

Against the Pursuit of Guru

2015-12-27T23:13:00.000-05:00

I could summarize my adult life as the pursuit of guru status on a variety of topics (blogging, economics, education, improv, business, fatherhood, etc). Instead I feel like that I've become a jack of all trades, GURU of none. Maybe that's not so bad. Here's a clip from a podcast interview with well known improv guru, Armando Diaz on the topic of guru-ness (~54:30):

I just don't like the idea of gurus anyway. I think every amazing person, teacher, or artist is totally fallible and to me when you hear about those things some people get let down. And then suddenly now I don't believe anything that person says.

Reminded me of so many celebrity controversies. They often fail in very public ways, but that doesn't inherently discredit any positives they stood for.

We're all super weak people and I think if you specialize in something, there's something terribly wrong with you. This is the one thing you embrace so much to the exclusion of developing as a full human being. So when I hear that someone is a guru I know that this is going to be a real damaged person and that's okay with me.

It's kind of like drug addicts. Whether as a cause or result, even when sober there is a lot of catch up to do in life. Anything that consumes your life is a loss in what you don't do. There is no such thing as a free lunch. And Armando said, that's okay. Guru isn't bad, it just has a cost.

Starting this week, the Alchemy Comedy Theater will be adding a 5th and 6th weekly show on Thursday nights. That and our total performer list reaching about 70 in the Spring (I feel my life has already stretched Dunbar's Number) will require the theater to run even more without my personal direction in all matters. Which is good.

As I discussed in a podcast I did recently, I grew up in an ensemble. I teach ensemble. I want my business (and maybe someday my classroom) to use those same principles.

Fame as a Mental Illness

2015-07-20T13:37:00.001-04:00

My long involvement with the improv comedy world has given me a glimpse into the culture of those who desire to be famous. Outside of the production of local shows, it's not something that has really appealed to me. Here's a convincing pop science explanation from the Cracked Podcast:

Why There's Less Conservatives in Comedy (and More in Radio)

2015-06-22T21:58:00.000-04:00

First, why talk radio appeals to conservatives:

liberals and conservatives seemed to have different aesthetic tastes. Conservatives seemed to prefer stories with clear-cut endings. Liberals, on the other hand, had more tolerance for a story like public radio’s Serial, which ends with some uncertainty and ambiguity.

[...]

As Young noticed, this is a kind of ambiguity that liberals tend to find more satisfying and culturally familiar than conservatives do. In fact, a study out of Ohio State University found that a surprising number of conservatives who were shown Colbert clips were oblivious to the fact that he was joking. In contrast, conservative talk radio humor tends to rely less on irony than straightforward indignation and hyperbole.

Conservatives often like to shoot straight and explain how things are. Which helps explain why liberals are drawn to comedy and satire:

the genre has always been aimed at taking down the powerful, from the Revolutionary War through Vietnam and 9/11. “Conservatism supports institutions and satire aims to knock these institutions down a peg,”

Conservatives want to "conserve", often skeptical of change. This makes them more loyal to traditional institutions. These, by there nature of being the "establishment", are open to attacks to keep their power in check. The whole article is insightful and I highly recommend it.

Difference Between Humans and Animals, Part XXIX

2014-04-22T17:37:00.001-04:00

The Earth Day "are you smarter than a chimpanzee" memory game edition:

The explanation:

This tells Japanese scholar Tetsuro Matsuzawa "that he has an actual picture memory, an eidetic memory. ... He takes a picture with his mind and holds it." Even if he turns away from the screen to do something else, the information stays in Ayumu's head. "You and I," says Matsuzawa, "we cannot do this. ... It is something special for the chimpanzee mind. It is not a matter of training for them. It is their way of seeing the world."

Emcee of TEDxGreenville

2014-03-20T08:54:00.001-04:00

For someone who has a TED Talks tag on his blog, this is exciting news!

At last night’s TEDxGreenville salon, a preview party for TEDxGreenville 2014: Unzipped, Harrison Brookie was introduced as the emcee for this year’s April 11th all-day conference.

Harrison may be familiar to many as the ring leader of an improv group that’s become quite popular in the last couple of years. Actually, rather than a ring leader, he’s more like a comedy super-hero. By day, Harrison Brookie is a social studies teacher at Southside International Baccalaureate High School. By night, he is the Executive Producer and Artistic Director of Alchemy Comedy Theater. In between all of that fun, he and his wife Traci have a daughter and, depending on when you read this, a new baby boy.

Harrison grew up in Greenville and returned home in 2011, after journeying to other locales to master his education and comedic skills, to found the Alchemy Comedy Theater, which produces weekly comedy shows. Those of us who’ve caught him and his cohorts in action on a Friday night at Coffee Underground might agree that, indeed, he’s a master of his art. Come cheer him on as this year’s emcee for TEDxGreenville 2014: Unzipped, Friday, April 11, at The Kroc Center in downtown Greenville. Come early. Registration begins at 8:00 am for what promises to be our most engaging TEDx event ever!

NPR and Improv Meet where Relationships and Comedy Meet

2014-01-02T22:47:00.001-05:00

Here is a great discussion from my old stomping grounds in North Carolina. Makes me miss WUNC a good bit. Makes me miss DSI Comedy a great bit.

Slimprov: Two Half Men Make a Full Stage

2013-09-18T16:15:00.001-04:00

One of my more fun sets in a while on tape. Two men. 1 scene. 24 minutes.

AlchemyComedy.com

Using the Imaginary to Improve the Real

2013-08-10T17:42:00.001-04:00

Fresh off my stint in Chicago for the summer, here's a guest blog I did for Greenville's online magazine Fete:

Teaching comedy improv classes is trying to get complete strangers to act like best friends, mortal enemies, and long lost lovers. The greatest part, is that if you challenge yourself in the pretend world long enough, it will affect your real life. That’s what we are all about at the Alchemy Comedy Theater here in Greenville, SC. Our name, Alchemy, means “the power or process of transforming the common into the special” and that’s we do every week in our classes and on stage. Like the science of attempting to turn metals like lead into gold, improvisation does not produce a tangible product. But like alchemy, whose practices help shape modern chemistry, the art of improvisation can have a profound impact on us off stage.

The theater started 2 years ago with four founding members, Jason Underwood, Meg Pierson, Ben Burris, and me, Harrison Brookie. Since then we’ve been performing live improv comedy shows and teaching improv classes to the public every week. After our upcoming audition this September, we will number closer to 30 regularly performing and teaching members. Our August Improv 101 sold out at 14 students. We have grown a vibrate theatrical comedy community of not just fellow performers, but a supportive and challenging company of allies.

Our shows are funny, but humor is only as good as the truth it gets at. In improvisation, we are striving for authenticity, because nothing else on stage is. It’s you and your teammates. No set. No script. No net. I spent five weeks this summer learning and performing in Chicago’s iO theater, the birthplace of long form, play-like, improv comedy. I had the pleasure of getting a workshop with the founder of the theater Charna Halpern who quoted her co-creator Del Close as saying “If we treat each other as if we are geniuses, poets and artists, we have a better chance of becoming that on stage.” If you create together, it brings you together. The great part about improvisation, is everyone, the performers and the audience, are creating together.

The Alchemy Comedy Theater performs every Friday night in the theater at Coffee Underground and have another Introduction to Improv Scene Work class starting Tuesday, September 30th.

Click here to see Alchemy Comedy videos in each issue of Fête Magazine!